Spec me an office build

mattyy

mattyy

mattyy

Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2008
Posts
491
Hi,

Looking for a bit of advice on replacing our office computer.
Its use is emails, some word processing and browsing.

Looking for a reasonable build with a reasonable price.

No monitor/keyboard/mouse required.
 
Hi Mattyy!

Do you have a budget we can work to? Also do you need an OS?

Also, what is your current build? some parts may be salvageable!
 
Budget would be £500 but preferable as under it as possible.

Nothing from the old machine.. will still be used for sage.

An OS would be needed and would like to go with the latest version of windows.

Cheers!
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/120G) £74.99
1 x BitFenix Phenom MATX Cube Case - Midnight Black £74.95
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £71.99
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £71.99
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan GOLD 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLYD38G2400HC11CDC01) £65.99
1 x ASRock FM2A75 Pro4-M AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £59.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020047-UK) £49.99
Total : £483.98 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Should be fine for all your standard office things :)

Case is personal preference, you can get much cheaper, but I do like this one (aesthetically!). If you had a less expensive case you could fit another HDD in there too!
 
Looks great, I have a few Qs;

What will the performance be like compared to a haswell i5?

Concerning the SSD, would you say swapping this out for a traditional HDD be a bad move to save another £30-£40?

Then the saving on the a cheaper case (although I do like the one spec'd I wont be looking at it!) added with the free delivery I should get will make it around £400.
 
An i5 will blow the socks of the A8 chip... but then the K series i5 is about £100 more expensive, and just general office work probably won't utilise it to its full potential.

In an ideal world, you'd have your Operating system and commonly used applications installed on the SSD, and the normal hard drive will be used for storage of less used things, documents, games and what not!

I wouldn't say its a bad move, but if I was building a PC just for internet browsing and general office tasks, id just get an SSD, and if I required more storage down the line, pick up a 1TB HDD later.

SSD's are soooo fast :)

YOUR BASKET
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £32.99
Total : £43.49 (includes shipping : £8.75).



example of a cheaper case - I've done a build for a friend in one of these and its quite a nice case.
 
 
mattyy said:
What will the performance be like compared to a haswell i5?

Concerning the SSD, would you say swapping this out for a traditional HDD be a bad move to save another £30-£40?
Click to expand...

An AMD APU and a SSD will be much better to use than an i5 and a HDD.

For emails and browsing you could pretty much use any CPU and not tell the difference.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/120G) £74.99
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £71.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £71.99
1 x ASRock FM2A75M-DGS AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £52.99
1 x Corsair Carbide 200R Compact ATX Case - Black (CC-9011023-WW) £49.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD £43.99
1 x Xigmatek Tauro 500W '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £43.99
1 x TeamGroup Elite 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (TED34GM1600HC11DC01) £32.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
1 x Arctic F12 Pro Case Fan - 120mm £3.98
Total : £477.49 (includes shipping : £10.50).




This is what I would go for. SSD and AMD is superior to intel and HDD for just an office PC.

As someone else said, stick your OS on the SSD and any programmes you use often (MS office) and I bet you won't regret it.

You could also upgrade the RAM to 8gb if you wanted to. Get the Crucial that's in the above spec for £59.99. Although 4gb should be enough for light use.
 
Last edited:
Rhyswh said:
*snip

This is what I would go for. SSD and AMD is superior to intel and HDD for just an office PC.

As someone else said, stick your OS on the SSD and any programmes you use often (MS office) and I bet you won't regret it.

You could also upgrade the RAM to 8gb if you wanted to. Get the Crucial that's in the above spec for £59.99. Although 4gb should be enough for light use.
Click to expand...

Just to add that all storage is done on a central server so storage space isn't an issue. I think you have all assured me that the SSD is the way to go so I will stick with that.

If I'm honest when I had a look myself I completely dis-regarded AMD and the builds I was coming up with were considerably more with an i5. I think sticking to the A8 is a good idea.

Will alter the builds here to suit me and come back for a check!

Thanks guys.
 
YOUR BASKET
1 x Kingston HyperX 3K SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Drive (SH103S3/120G) £74.99
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614) £71.99
1 x AMD A8-5600K Black Edition 3.60GHz (Socket FM2) APU Trinity Quad Core Processor (AD560KWOHJBOX) £71.99
1 x Crucial Ballistix Sport 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (BLS2CP4G3D1609DS1S00CEU) £59.99
1 x ASRock FM2A75M-DGS AMD A75 Chipset (Socket FM2) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £52.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020047-UK) £49.99
1 x BitFenix Merc Beta Gaming Case - Black £32.99
1 x Pioneer 24x Internal DVR-221LBK DVD Rewriter - OEM £17.99
Total : £432.91 (includes shipping : FREE).




This will all be viewed on a 24" monitor. Does that sound okay?
Will I notice any difference spending the extra £5 for the 2400mhz ram spec'd in the first build?
 
mattyy said:
This will all be viewed on a 24" monitor. Does that sound okay?
Will I notice any difference spending the extra £5 for the 2400mhz ram spec'd in the first build?
Click to expand...

Not unless you want to do a bit of light gaming in your dinner break. :D
 
Are you just after the 1 computer or new computers for the whole office :)

If you need a whole office I would instead get a massive server running something like Windows 2008R2 Enterprise or something to host remote desktop's and handle all the tasks that users are doing on the network and instead of having desktop computers use some thin clients (Igels and 10Zig's are quite good and I have used both, you don't need anything fancy just a basic computer with linux installed and just use a remote desktop gateway like citrix or remote desktop session as all the network will be carrying is only screen contents, mouse and keyboard commands transmitted).
 
LOL, people, why you propose such "huge" PSUs ? In this case 250W-300W will be an overkill.
And no "K" CPUs - overkill as well. The simplest 2-cores CPU is way too much. Intel = Pentium, or Celeron would be fine. AMD APU = A4-4000.
RAM = 2x2GB as well (8 GB for office ????).

Mattyy, don't get fooled, you might spend less than that.
 
biuro74 said:
LOL, people, why you propose such "huge" PSUs ? In this case 250W-300W will be an overkill.
And no "K" CPUs - overkill as well. The simplest 2-cores CPU is way too much. Intel = Pentium, or Celeron would be fine. AMD APU = A4-4000.
RAM = 2x2GB as well (8 GB for office ????).

Mattyy, don't get fooled, you might spend less than that.
Click to expand...

I agree with you that most of the spec is overkill for the needs of the OP but if he's set a budget of £500 then why would you not get the best his money can buy? If he would have set a £300 budget then it would have been different.

Anyone who would have suggested a £300 build in this thread would have been ridiculed because it would have been terrible compared to the £450-£500 ones that have been specd!

OP, you will be fine with a anything over 250W. Your system will probably be using around 150W at a guess (and that's probably a high estimate).
 
"preferable as under it as possible"

Some of people don't know how to help, except helping with spending money :>
Mate, if you take SSD instead of HDD, your 2-core 4GB RAM system will be really fine. 500 pounds is a budget for an entry-level gaming, office one should be much lower.
 
Rhyswh said:
I agree with you that most of the spec is overkill for the needs of the OP but if he's set a budget of £500 then why would you not get the best his money can buy? If he would have set a £300 budget then it would have been different.

Anyone who would have suggested a £300 build in this thread would have been ridiculed because it would have been terrible compared to the £450-£500 ones that have been specd!

OP, you will be fine with a anything over 250W. Your system will probably be using around 150W at a guess (and that's probably a high estimate).
Click to expand...

Budget would be £500 but preferable as under it as possible.
Click to expand...

Lets be honest, you don`t really need a quad core just for a basic office machine. The £400 system I specced, is more than enough.
 
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